The case for "it was for-Israel's sake," was covered here in the US repeatedly, in fact, General Zinni, who served as a US representative to Israel, wrote about it in his book. Many others likewise wrote about the Israel connection.

I don't have the time or inclination to go over those arguments, which begin with the "A Clean Break" document written for Netanyahu during his first administration in 1996, by whom else, Jewish Neocons like Perle and Feith and other right wing Likudniks. Netanyahu followed that document including wining and dining the Christian Zionists, but the take out of Iraq was intimated in it. Iran came up later. It is interested that, although Wolfowitz, the architect of the Iraq invasion, was not part of the consulting group, Douglas Feith, who was second to Wolfowitz in the Defense Department, was. More than anyone else, he was responsible for fudging the intelligence against Saddam (the WMD ruse, bogus Al Quaeda connections), the stuff Bush told the nation in his yearly speech to Congress, which was repeated by Colen Powell to the UN.

As you say, Google can be a good friend. But didn't you say that you were a think tanker? You should know this stuff then better than me. There is of course the oil angle, which may have been another motive for attacking Iraq out of Cheney's office.